The effects of nonverbal pride and skill on judgements of victory and social influence: a boxing study

ABSTRACT

Displaying nonverbal pride after a boxing match leads to judgements of success. However, it is not clear the extent to which this effect generalises nor whether it can override competing information. An experimental design had 214 participants watch two boxing clips that were manipulated so that one was evenly matched and the other had a fighter with an advantage (i.e. demonstrating more skill). Nonverbal behaviour at the completion of the fight varied between fighters (pride versus neutral). When the fight was evenly matched, the fighters displaying nonverbal pride were judged as winning the fight, but the fighter did not garner increased social influence. In contrast, when fighters demonstrated superior skill, the more skilled fighters who displayed neutral postures rather than the less-skilled ones displaying pride were judged as winning the fight, and the skilled fighters garnered increased social influence. These results suggest that in a boxing context, a pride bias works in evenly matched scenarios, but when differences in skill are more clearly present, a skill bias is more pronounced and leads to more social influence. Furthermore, perceptions of skill were associated with judgments of victory across stimuli, suggesting the importance of skill perceptions in such judgments.

KEYWORDS:

• Pride
• skill
• nonverbal behaviour
• boxing
• victory

Acknowledgements

Data file is available on OSF: https://osf.io/q4ahp/?view_only=ac72dce4ca384fd9b0bc05c44498f704

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 8 participants drawn from the same population as the full sample rated images on the extent to which they showed pride and neutral on a 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) scale. Pride-displaying images were rated significantly higher on pride (M = 3.75, SD = .94) than neutral-displaying images (M = 1.59, SD = .74), t(7)=4.52, p=.003, 95% CI[1.03, 3.28], Cohen’s d = 1.60, and neutral-displaying images were rated significantly higher on neutral (M = 2.91, SD = .79) than pride-displaying images (M = 1.81, SD = .83), t(7)=2.85, p=.03, 95% CI[−2.00, −.19], Cohen’s d = 1.01.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.